ike to have you, too,
Bayliss, of course."

Bayliss's thanks were not effusive. Frances, however, declared that
she should love to see the greenhouses. For my part, common politeness
demanded my asking Mr. Heathcroft to call at the rectory. He accepted
the invitation at once and heartily.

He called the very next day and joined us at tea. The following
afternoon we, Hephzy, Frances and I, visited the greenhouses. On this
occasion we met, for the first time, the lady of the Manor herself. Lady
Kent Carey was a stout, gray-haired person, of very decided manner and
a mannish taste in dress. She was gracious and affable, although I
suspected that much of her affability toward the American visitors was
assumed because she wished to please her nephew. A. Carleton Heathcroft,
Esquire, was plainly her ladyship's pride and pet. She called him
"Carleton, dear," and "Carleton, dear" was, in his aunt's estimation,
the model of everything desirable in man.

The greenhouses were spacious and the display of rare plants and flowers
more varied and beautiful than any I had ever seen. We walked through
the grounds surrounding the mansion, and viewed with becoming reverence
the trees planted by various distinguished personages, His Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales, Her late Majesty Queen Victoria,
Ex-President Carnot of France, and others. Hephzy whispered to me as we
were standing before the Queen Victoria specimen:

"I don't believe Queen Victoria ever planted that in the world, do
you, Hosy. She'd look pretty, a fleshy old lady like her, puffin' away
diggin' holes with a spade, now would she!"

I hastily explained the probability that the hole was dug by someone
else.

Hephzy nodded.

"I guess so," she added. "And the tree was put in by someone else and
the dirt put back by the same one. Queen Victoria planted that tree the
way Susanna Wixon said she broke my best platter, by not doin' a single
thing to it. I could plant a whole grove that way and not get a bit
tired."

Lady Carey bade us farewell at the fish-ponds and asked us to come
again. Her nephew, however, accompanied us all the way home--that is, he
accompanied Frances, while Hephzy and I made up the rear guard. The next
day he dropped in for some tennis. Herbert Bayliss was there before
him, so the tennis was abandoned, and a three-cornered chat on the
lawn substituted. Heathcroft treated the young doctor with a polite
condescension which would have irritated me e